Quote:People who speak in tongues are not speaking any actual language. Glossolalia. I can babble incoherently to impress gullible onlookers and say it was god, too. You have no empirical evidence, let alone proof, for the existence of a god. If you did, you wouldn't be here.

Your non-sequitur is this: If I lacked evidence, I would be out looking for it instead of being here. And again, the pride and stubborn rudeness of most of the freethinkers on this forum is ample evidence that the Bible's predictions of human behavior without Jesus are truth.

Quote:People who speak in tongues are not speaking any actual language. Glossolalia. I can babble incoherently to impress gullible onlookers and say it was god, too. You have no empirical evidence, let alone proof, for the existence of a god. If you did, you wouldn't be here.

Your non-sequitur is this: If I lacked evidence, I would be out looking for it instead of being here. And again, the pride and stubborn rudeness of most of the freethinkers on this forum is ample evidence that the Bible's predictions of human behavior without Jesus are truth.

No, it's not actually. Try again. I'm saying if you had undeniable evidence for the existence of god, you would be telling the world of it, and the world would know of it. I just checked the news. You're not on it with your empirical evidence, your unquestionable proof. God's not on the news either, or the anchors would look a little more impressed. Second, you trolling an Atheist forum and getting negative responses is hardly indicative of human behavior without Jesus. Even when I was a Christian, I would have called you out on these baseless claims and fallible analogies. Even then, I knew the burden of proof was on me (how do you think I came to be an Atheist anyways?). I'm a good, generous, moral, loving, and kind person. Showing what you perceive as stubborn rudeness to someone does not negate their positive qualities, especially on the internet where emotion/expression is less accurately perceived. If I spoke my last sentence to you, in person, word for word, you would maybe not find it as negative. Finally, the term I mentioned, "glossolalia," is a legit term. I wasn't typing in tongues.

Keep your rosaries out of my ovaries, and your theology out of my biology.
"If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people." --Dr. House

(16-05-2012 07:55 AM)DeistPaladin Wrote: To underscore why this is such a problem for them, try to imagine re-working a scene from a different work of fiction: Star Wars. Everyone on this forum probably remembers the scene when the skeptical admiral scoffs at Darth Vader's religious beliefs. Darth Vader then accepted the burden of proof and provided a compelling, if violent, demonstration. What he did couldn't be mistaken for natural occurrence or coincidence. If such a thing happened in real life, no atheist would remain unconvinced.

Now try to imagine that instead Darth Vader responded with "Well, you know the ontological thing-and-a-thing with the teleological blah blah blah transcendental yatta yatta with the (latin phrases thrown in for good measure here) and..." I'm sure someone could polish up that hypothetical script re-write but it wouldn't be any more convincing to a skeptical imperial admiral, certainly not in comparison to the original version.

(16-05-2012 05:42 AM)Zephony Wrote: One variation of this argument is William Lane Craig's (WLC) Kalam Cosmological Argument. It states that:

Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence;

The universe has a beginning of its existence;

The universe has a cause of its existence.

Of course WLC concludes that since the universe has a cause, it must have been God.

The universe began with the big bang. It exploded from a singularity, and infinitely small, infinitely dense particle.

A confirmed prediction of the General Theory of Relativity is that time passes more slowly in stronger gravitational fields. Black holes are enormous gravity wells and each is surrounded by an "event horizon" where time stops. The singularity of the big bang was the mother of all black holes, it was surrounded by an event horizon at which time stoped. The big bang was not only the beginning of the universe but the beginning of time. To ask what happened before the big bang is like asking what is south of the south pole or what is beneath the center of the earth. All are meaningless questions.

The concept of "cause" implies an temporal relationship between the causing event and the caused event, namely, that the causing event occurs before the caused event. But there is no time before the beginning of the universe since time began at the same time the universe began, ergo, the beginning of the universe is the one known exception to the idea that anything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause for its existence. Since one of the premises is false, the conclusion is not necessarily true.

On the other hand, if one wishes to deny the General Theory of Relativity then there must have been a time before the big bang. That leaves open the possibility that either (1)the singularity existed for eternity before exploding, or (2)before the big bang the universe was contracting and fell in on itself in a big crunch causing the singularity. Either way the second premise is false and the argument fails.

Even if both premises are true the only valid conclusion is that the beginning of the universe had a cause. There is nothing in the argument that implies the cause was a sentient being, let alone the god of the old testament.

(28-06-2013 02:07 AM)f stop Wrote: The universe began with the big bang. It exploded from a singularity, and infinitely small, infinitely dense particle.

A confirmed prediction of the General Theory of Relativity is that time passes more slowly in stronger gravitational fields. Black holes are enormous gravity wells and each is surrounded by an "event horizon" where time stops. The singularity of the big bang was the mother of all black holes, it was surrounded by an event horizon at which time stoped. The big bang was not only the beginning of the universe but the beginning of time. To ask what happened before the big bang is like asking what is south of the south pole or what is beneath the center of the earth. All are meaningless questions.

The concept of "cause" implies an temporal relationship between the causing event and the caused event, namely, that the causing event occurs before the caused event. But there is no time before the beginning of the universe since time began at the same time the universe began, ergo, the beginning of the universe is the one known exception to the idea that anything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause for its existence. Since one of the premises is false, the conclusion is not necessarily true.

On the other hand, if one wishes to deny the General Theory of Relativity then there must have been a time before the big bang. That leaves open the possibility that either (1)the singularity existed for eternity before exploding, or (2)before the big bang the universe was contracting and fell in on itself in a big crunch causing the singularity. Either way the second premise is false and the argument fails.

Even if both premises are true the only valid conclusion is that the beginning of the universe had a cause. There is nothing in the argument that implies the cause was a sentient being, let alone the god of the old testament.

This is absolutely awesome. Easily the most succinct explanation of the Big Bang I've encountered. I never really understood how it was possible until reading this. (I'm sure this my understanding is still very rudimentary.) THANKS!

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid,
and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”
- Bertrand Russel

(20-06-2012 07:18 PM)fstratzero Wrote: The Kalam Cosmological Argument argument is just an argument from ignorance coupled with hasty generalization.

(basically I don't know how the universe came to being, but I know everything has a cause, it's therefore god)

I'm sure WLC knows this, but he is a smart man and knows the apologist business is lucrative. I suspect he loves money, attention, and the reassurance from his fans that his reasoning is sound.

Also WLC uses something called the BVG paper aka "The Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin's Past-Finite Universe theorem", as a proof. They will often post this as scientific evidence. To try and get an atheist to see that there is truth to their claim.

So lets shed some light on it.

I also checked with Caltech cosmologist
Sean Carroll, whose recent book From Eternity to Here provides an
excellent discussion of many of the problems associated with early
universe cosmology. Here was his response:

'I think my answer
would be fairly concise: no result derived on the basis of classical
spacetime can be used to derive anything truly fundamental, since
classical general relativity isn't right. You need to quantize gravity.
The BGV [Borde, Guth, Vilenkin] singularity theorem is certainly
interesting and important, because it helps us understand where
classical GR breaks down, but it doesn't help us decide what to do when
it breaks down. Surely there's no need to throw up our hands and declare
that this puzzle can't be resolved within a materialist framework.
Invoking God to fill this particular gap is just as premature and
unwarranted as all the other gaps.'
(Stenger, Victor J. The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe is not Designed for Us. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2011. pp. 127-30)

William Lane Craig is the undisputed master of circular reasoning (and that's up against some fairly stiff opposition). All his philosophical meanderings begin with begin with the conclusion they lead to and can be essentially whittled down to: 'God exists, therefore God exists'.

I especially cringe when WLC sets up the false dichotomy about what type of things are trancendent: it must either be x (abstract object) or y (God) and it can't be x. Well, why not just say it must be y right from the beginning? Could it be that people might start asking questions like "Really? That's the only possibility???" But in essence that is exactly what he is doing, just trying to be sneaky about it.

I'd like to point out that just because the universe has a measurable beginning...that doesn't necessarily mean the beginning we "see" is the "first cause". We can only see to that point...our universe may be a point on a "map"...a universe in a series of others. The apologist will then accuse me of kicking the can down the road, because there still has to be a "first cause".

1.) In that case, the apologist is asking me to step beyond "how far" we can see...much like a child born and raised on a primitive island. He may speculate there is more out there than he can see...but cannot pysically observe anything outside of this. We cannot see outside out of our own universe...there are "theories" out there that have a lot of complex math saying maaaaybe we are one in a bunch...but we can't really speak to those, or study them. Since we can't speak to those, we can only assume that the beginning for which we have evidence, IS the beginning...but it is just an assumption.

2.) Although it seems logical that it must be caused...and follow me on this one...everything we can observe that has a measurable cause...had a cause...and that had a cause...and we back-track enough causes to send us right back to the big bang. We don't know what caused it...hell, we can assume it had a cause, but the cause would be past what we can observe, so we can't even speak to it...or even assume a cause exists.

So...in my 97% science/3% philosophy brain...saying the beginning of the universe has a cause is begging the question...but it gets a pass, because we as humans find patterns, and identifying causal relationships is a key to understanding what's around us, and how we should react in it if we are to survive.

Shit I hope that made sense...

Let your anger be as a monkey in a piñata...hiding amongst the candy...hoping the kids don't break through with the stick!

Here...I found my response to a friend of mine who is getting his PhD in WLCraigery. Maybe this will make more sense that the above:

2. something that comes into existence has a cause

I have a hard time with this one, as anything that comes to exist in its current form can be traced to a cause…sure. A baby comes from mom and dad…but from where do the materials for construction come? Same is true with a toy car, or a real car…but where did those atoms come from? Then where did those stars come from? I don’t need to fill in the blanks…you’re a smart guy and I KNOW you know the answer just as I do. Thus, you also know that this statement on any level, takes us right back to the beginning…premise 1 (1. the universe has a beginning <he provides both philosophical and scientific arguments supporting this>). Since we don’t know what’s past the beginning, we cannot say if it was caused, or how…we just can’t see “into” it.

Let your anger be as a monkey in a piñata...hiding amongst the candy...hoping the kids don't break through with the stick!